For this assignment, I decided to play World of Warcraft for a couple of hours (for my first time). When I logged in, I entered a world that I shared with thousands of other users. This vast land varied greatly from physical features to level of difficulty just to survive. While I played, I completed a couple of quests, bought some new items and abilities and discovered some new areas. I had let a friend know that I was going to play for the first time, so he logged in and we played together, completing quests and adventuring as a team. With each new ability attained, each new area discovered and each higher level achieved, I found myself wanting to just continue playing, even after I had been playing for a couple hours already. Even after my friend logged off, I continued to play and found a fellow warlock who helped me discover things about my abilities as a warlock.
I had trouble deciding on the degree at which the Proteus Effect described by Yee & Bailenson (2007) determined how I interacted among the other players with whom I shared my meta-world. The Proteus Effect is the idea that an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them. The Proteus Effect seems to predict that one will behave in manner that is stereotypical of their avatar. I do not believe this to be so when I played World of Warcraft. As a new player, I had idea how any other player would expect me, a level 1 warlock, to act. I believe that the way I behaved as a warlock conformed to my abilities as a warlock. As a warlock, I had strong spells that could be shot from a distance and little defense to physical attack. For these two reasons, I avoided hand to hand combat and weakened opponents from afar. If they got too close and my health was down, I used a spell to force them to run in the opposite direction for a couple of seconds so that I could make my get away. As a warlock, I found that I played as a bit of a coward, someone who just hits and runs away. There was really no “honor” in playing as a warlock (but it was still really fun.) I did not act like a coward because I thought that the other player would think that I would act like a coward. I acted like a coward because I was new and it was my best chance at survival given my current set of abilities.
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4 comments:
I have never before played World of Warcraft nor have I ever really heard any details about the game, so I really enjoyed your post. From your description, it seems clear to me that there are specific rules to the game and organizational power structures that you must follow, which is likely why you as a “warlock” had to accept the “hit and run” mechanism in order to survive. This makes it seem to me that within a game like World of Warcraft it must be difficult to form many close relationships at all because you are constantly competing and must be hyper-vigilant to attacks from others. Therefore, no matter how attractive you perceived your avatar to be, you were still worry of creating a closer interpersonal distance. I also found it interesting that you did not list any physical features that determined the value of attractiveness of your avatar. Within World of Warfare, attractiveness ratings seem to be based more on an avatar’s status within the game than physical appearance.
Hi Mike.
I think your results somewhat refuted what is proposed in the Yee and Bailenson article. It seems that it wasn't your avatar that influenced what you were doing in the game, but it was more that you were modeled by other people in the game. In this sense, it's not your individuality that defined who you were and how you played, but it was more your peers. This is extraordinarily different because it's not your own character that influenced who you were, and how you played.
Rather, I don't think that this completely contradicts the article, but it does definitely suggest that our avatar is not the most important part of who we are when we play games. Rather, it's the people around us that influence us most and then after that, we resort to our personal presence. I say this because I tried playing the game and I was quite alone when I played it and was severely affected by how my avatar was. If I was playing with my friend, I might have followed him around a bit more and played more like him. Does this suggest that conformity is the overriding factor? In a group salient setting? SIDE effect?
Hi Mike.
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I have always thought of World Of Warfare to be the most intense online game. I am very impressed that for this assignment you braved that online world! I thought it was very interesting how an increase in your abilities changed how you interacted with others. Maybe since warlocks could only hit and run and could not fight with honor, that changed how you approached others. This would fit directly with the Yee and Bailenson paper.
Hey Mike,
Great post! I actually wrote about World of Warcraft myself. In games like World of Warcraft, we are judged as players by our abilities and how we play. The more skills we show, the more attractive we appear. This game seems to disregard an avatar's appearance and focuses on a player's status and abilities. In your case, your avatar has specific abilities that influences and limits what you do in the game. For example, you mentioned how you used your avatar for spells that worked well for distance fighting and as a result, you had to avoid close combat.
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